Korny Klown2
Just the other day I was watching this review of Softimage ICE and I was impressed. Procedural modeling particle simulations, crowd simulations and what not with the look and feel of an Autodesk product. Procedural modeling, particle simulation and so on have been long time the unique characteristic of Houdini….and then came Softimage ICE.
I'm thinking a bit into the future. I wanna come away from Maya because I'm working with Nuke for comp, I'm looking for a procedural nodebased 3D software that gives me the same amount of flexibility, as Nuke. At the moment I still like the idea of Houdini bit more but depending on the direction Autodesk will develop Softimage in, I see serious competition for Houdini. Beyond that, considering that it is an Autodesk product, with the look and feel of an Autodesk product, with the shortcuts of an Autodesk product but with the nodebased procedural power similar to Houdini, what do you think, the studios and the Autodesk users will choose when it comes to switching software. Probably something they are already used to. I just hope that Side Effects will realize that they are facing serious competion and since I am a fan of Houdini I hope that they can keep pace with that.
Waving the “fully procedural nodebased” sign and resting on these laurels is not enough anymore. And if it is not Softimage, someday some software will come that completly replaces Houdini, in all aspects, so if Side Effects would ask me for advice (which they wouldn't do, I know), I would say: Stop sticking too much to the old paradigms, modernise Houdini, the industry doesn't sleep.

the sad thing is that Autodesk has mostly dropped the development of Softimage XSI. When you see what type of releases they had in the last 2-3 Years it was just a bad joke. i think last year the main feature from the new XSI was a camera sequencer!

there is also a separation of the other packages. 3DS Max will be more in the Game Industry/Industrial (CAD) and Maya for the Movie Industry.
For the FX stuff there will be the bitfrost part but when it comes out i don't know.

For Houdini a lot of users have wishes for the modeling part (look at odforce.net :-) ). i hope SESI will find time to create a solution that is better then the current stat. but except of the modelling part you have got a near complete software package. there is also a Compositing system it misses some functions to compair it against nuke and yes also speed :-).

the best thing is to make a RFE and maybe a Technical Paper or a Movie how it should look…. your ideal workflow.

enjoy your learning and look at peter quint's tutorial on vimeo they help alot, thank you peter :-)

maybe you like this interface:
http://houdinicreationdesk.ipage.com/index.html [houdinicreationdesk.ipage.com]

it's slick and simple :-)

to compair renders is always hard to judge and i'm not a fan of it.

gpu renders has got speed but not all functions build in or has some other limits.

for mantra it would be nice to have a hybrid solution like that what the luxrender has been done.

http://www.luxrender.net/wiki/GPU [luxrender.net]

it doesn't give the full speed like a gpu render but it will give some boost in rendering and the investment in to the development should be lower.
when i'm correct the luxrender gpu solution was in the 2000 loc area.
or
sesi makes a diffrent way like a vex => LLVM => GPU/PHI concept…..

sesi will know what they are doing… :-)

will be there a RSS Feed for the H13?

i hope you all had alot of beers yesterday :-)

i think bitfrost was a separate software(core engine) and in maya they made a interface. there is somewhere a post on a max forum.

first of all houdini is a matrue tool if you have got time for the learning invest your time in houdini. if a project is coming soon and you know a bit realflow take realflow.

houdini has so much possabilities in it you can reach a quality level that no other single tool can reach or even combined. but to reach that level you have to learn alot!

for some tutorials:

sidefx tutorials:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=14&Itemid=132 [sidefx.com]

peter quint's tutorials:
https://vimeo.com/user2030228/videos [vimeo.com]

just shortly seen on odforce a wonderful explaintation about houdini from “old school” #7:
http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/17105-short-and-sweet-op-centric-lessons/ [forums.odforce.net]

the best thing is invest a weekend for both tools and look what they can offer. a week late invest some time in one tool and again a week later invest it in the other tool.

good luck

@acaiborka

thank you for that post…. it's a pleasure to read the “old school” post… :-)

i would prefer a Mantra on a Xeon Phi and the porting time should be small because the most part of the optimisation you have done already.
the best thing is to get in contact with intel ask them for a testdrive and invest 1-2 days for the porting. with phi you don't have to write opencl or cuda code!

or there is also the possability to integrate something like that:
http://mycryengine.com/index.php?conid=59 [mycryengine.com]

Spawn_x
My wish for next 150 versions is : please never sell houdini to autodesk. Thats all .. I am new here, but i love this very active forums with some developers voices and everythink around that. :wink: very good work guys

we need in the forum the i Like Button :-)

+1

i'm not a animation/rigging person but maybe this tutorials will help for a first look:

http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1859&Itemid=257 [sidefx.com]

http://www.cmivfx.com/tutorials/view/533/Houdini+Rigging+Animation+Fundamentals [cmivfx.com]

if you look the current speed up from mantra thanks to the better data handling it's realy hard for me to look to a gpu render at the moment.

mantra is a AAA render and it's solid a gpu render can crash an gives you troubles with problem's that you don't have in a cpu render. (we have got here octane render)

but mantra has some disadvantage against a gpu render.
1. you have to learn the render to use it correctly. ( it's not a toy)
2. to get a solid rendering in a short time (< 10 min final render quality). optimize your workflow
3. think the houdini way.

i have made just for fun a environment ligth linked to the compositing nodes and now i have got functions nearly like hdr light studio for free.

it comes sooon………. :-)

i havent worked with houdini fur but maybe this can help:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1409&Itemid=344 [sidefx.com]

the sick thing about houdini fur is you have complete code acess… good luck.

it's getting pretty hard to solve this. :-(
the best thing is to ask sidefx maybe they can help….
at the moment i can't do more… next weekend i can try something that can maybe help….

try this link:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BwiafQTI5NDTQlVraXRrOGlfVU0 [docs.google.com]

(it will bring a security message because google can't check it for virus because it's not a doc file)

if it works i will try to put the new ones up when it's weekend.

is google also filtered in iran?

if no i can put the videos on my drive account and give you a download link.
otherwise you can ask sidefx if they can put it on there servers.

if it's a vimeo hosted video you can click the vimeo in the player and it will go direct on theres site.
on thers site you will find the download link click it and see the list of happy downloading. :-)

there are plenty of tutorials :-)

on the sidefx site you can start with the getting startet: intro tutorials:
http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=192&Itemid=351 [sidefx.com]

on the rigth side you will finde alot of tutorials if you would like to learn more you can view the peter quint tutorials under: http://vimeo.com/channels/54102 [vimeo.com]

just learn learn learn and learn

if you are a lucky person and you are near vancouver you can go to the classrom trainings: http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=114&Itemid=215 [sidefx.com]
at the moment i haven't seen any in vancouver…

good luck….

at last intel released the xeon phi accelerator. the interesting part of it is not the speedup it's the programming. in the ideal case you get a speedup of 2x or 3x without reprogramming( needs a recompile) because it can use the same x86 bytecode.

it takes me wonder if sesi invest time in to it because if it's true it will save allot of time in the opencl optimization.

some infromation:
http://semiaccurate.com/2012/11/12/what-does-it-take-to-code-for-a-xeon-phi/ [semiaccurate.com]

the card prices are in the 2k$ area same as the nvidia tesla cards.